What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher
#2I love this. It describes a reality that I think exists into the present day. Regardless of our passions, real life is always there, filling ashtrays and picture frames whether you want it to or not.
Re: What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher
#3Don't be terrified. I suspect that once your professor had nothin left to prove, other things started to become more important - ground breaking happens when you walk where no one else has, even if that's not leading anywhere but home.
Perhaps the best research we can do is about us and our loved ones.
Re: What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher
#4This is incredibly depressing. I hope I stay active and relevant, well into my old age.
Re: What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher
#5I love this. It describes a reality that I think exists into the present day. Regardless of our passions, real life is always there, filling ashtrays and picture frames whether you want it to or not.
Indeed and the last part "And you realize this is what happens when you keep coming to work years after you’ve mentally retired. This terrifies me." A worrying and yet some how sobering thought once you realise, we all get older, less agile physically and mentally in different ways.
Re: What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher
#6This is incredibly depressing. I hope I stay active and relevant, well into my old age.
I'm not sure how one writes an upbeat article about cleaning out an office. :) A career is (or at least should be) much more than artifacts left behind.
Re: What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher
#7The inevitable reality of life. Most of us will end up this way.
Rather then trying to change the universe, I say it's better to enjoy the experience.
Re: What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher
#8I think it's better to review a life or career as a whole rather than parse it and assign some sentimentality to the different aspects. In other words, so he or she may have 'mentally retired' but don't count that against anyone. It's not like were supposed to live full bore till you keel over. Maybe they called it in. Never the less they did accomplish something -more than many. That's not something to feel sorry about.
These are, after all, just people. People the same as the homeless or the newborn. Queer as folk, as they say. We're just folk. A bit strange but folk none the less.
Re: What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher
#9It would appear that people take away what they want from an experience.. Defined as the subjective experience.
There are many other views ..
> I may take over this guy's office and leave behind the same stuff he did, albeit newer versions, and never accomplish a fourth of what he did
> Even though he was passionate about what he did, he still had important things outside of it like a beautiful family
> People go through things in life. Yet, they carry on.
> Form and function... Function being the same, what is really changing?
> I will never truly know a person's story until I take the time to hear it from them.. Otherwise, I'm likely making up my own story that confirms with my own beliefs.
The author of the article has fears most of all and he molded what was left in the office to conform to those fears.
Whose to say what mental toll great accomplishments take... If it takes you 50 years to create what one man did in 5, who are you to comment on 'coming' to work for the remaining 45? All things being considered, in the aforementioned example, at least his work had 45 years to be shared and built upon. What of a person who takes 50?
Re: What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher
#10This is incredibly depressing. I hope I stay active and relevant, well into my old age.
I'm not sure how one writes an upbeat article about cleaning out an office. :) A career is (or at least should be) much more than artifacts left behind.
Yeah, what would really be depressing is if we were ranked based on the artifacts instead of the impact. It's really hard to tell from the plaques and detritus who was out there providing the shoulders for others to stand on.